


Turning Left Again

by dotfic



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-06
Updated: 2008-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna will let him believe. It's the only way. (coda for 4x13)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Left Again

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Post 4x13. Because there's more to the story than what we saw. There always is. Thank you to [](http://marag.livejournal.com/profile)[**marag**](http://marag.livejournal.com/) for the beta and letting me use her line about UNIT, and to [](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/profile)[**pheebs1**](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/) for the brit-pick.

She lets him believe.

What with the bright new firecracker feel of her brain, the bits of knowledge shooting, sparking through it, she works out what will happen to her in about a minute. It's another forty seconds to options on how to fix it, to how _he_ would fix it, and then another three seconds to pluck from a million different planets something else. It's an arcane mental ritual. She can use it now -- now, right now, hurry -- to filter and control the Time Lord part of her, lock it away if need be until it's quiet as a firefly going on and off in a dark corner of her mind. For her mantra, her safeword, she chooses _turn left_.

Donna slumps against the Doctor, into his arms. Lets him think there's no possibility she blocked the memory-wipe, that she's truly asleep. This is the only way. She has to let him believe.

Because otherwise, he wouldn't stand for it. He'd try to take it from her, because of the risks, no matter how she tried to convince him she has it under control. So she acts the lie.

She's as clever as he is now.

This is the only way.

 _Turn left_ , she thinks, and can feel the snaps and flickers at the corners of her mind recede, glowing in the dark but keeping in their place. As if you could ever get a supernova to be obedient. _Turn left, turn left_ \-- you lot there, don't get frisky, stay back -- _turn left_.

Lying fully clothed on her bed, staring at the ceiling, she practices letting bits of it out, then tucking them away. Not that different from turning a tap on and off, except instead of water the tap spits out energy and ideas, wonderful, fantastic, zooming ideas that make her dizzy and almost puke if she stares at them too hard. Numbers whizzing around her head, too much of time, and the knowledge of how things work.

She natters on the phone with the tap set to off and wishes she could turn the pain in his face off as easily. There is no mantra for that. If she could let him know, but she can't, not even a wink, or the smallest hint, or else the whole thing is over. She lets him believe, and chooses herself.

The hardest thing she has ever done is pretend she doesn't want to say good-bye to him. It makes her want to scream, to open the tap all the way, let it all unleash.

DoctorDonna, Doctor and Donna, traveling the universe together, that's ended, as surely as if she'd turned right at the T junction.

In this universe, just this once, a Time Lord stays. She can be the watchwoman; if she can't be on the TARDIS, then she'll be useful and help keep an eye on this hapless world that keeps getting shot at and blown up and dragged halfway across the universe, can help keep it turning.

Playing the fool, eating chips, watching the telly, pretending to be daft about what's going on in the news, while her insides feel like they've been torn open.

At night, out behind the house, she hunches into her parka next to Grandpa, who is doing just as bad a job as Mum at pretending he doesn't know. The sadness in him is almost as great as her last sight of the Doctor.

Grandpa adjusts the telescope, _ah, there, so clear tonight, for a change._ He tries to get her to go inside, so she says something inane, complains about her dental appointment tomorrow.

She looks up. The view is infinite and empty of a blue box.

The view's also infinite side to side, streets and houses and oceans and people, people, people, so many people. A guardian and a watcher, like Jack Harkness and Sarah Jane and Martha and Mickey but she'll have to do this on her own.

Right then, no sense whinging over it.

Grandpa adjusts the telescope focus while Donna wonders what she should do tomorrow, all the tomorrows stretching out after that. What she'll have for breakfast. Maybe pop 'round for some shopping. Maybe she should look for a new job.

She wonders if UNIT needs a temp.  



End file.
